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Mike writes "The sunny state of Florida just announced that they will begin construction this year on the world's first solar-powered city. A collaboration between Florida Power & Light and development firm Kitson & Partners, the 17,000 acre city will generate all of its electrical needs via a 75 megawatt, $300 million solar-powered generator. The city will also use smart grid technology to manage its power and allow all inhabitants of the community to monitor their energy consumption."

In that case, why build a massive solar generator instead of fitting the rooftops with solar panels from the start? It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city.

Why is this a troll? If you caught the "nut" instead of "not" misspelling, and want to help someone who was only making a joke get their karma back, mod back up to at least a 0 (sorry dotanchohen, I don't have mod points today or I'd help ya out myself).

That's cool, I have the karma to burn. I love it when mods don't get jokes and mod Troll. They spread their ignorance (now other people won't see the joke), which just goes to show that ignorance is easier spread then knowledge, even on/..

I would not assume that they are not planing to use roof tops for solar collection. I suspect that it will look something like a condo type city as we already have a few condo communities the size of cities. Simply adding business spaces into the condominiums is enough to provide employment and you can bet it will be a community largely for retired seniors. Of course the hitch might be if any voting is involved. Then it will take forever to get the ballots right and figure out who cheated just like it

Photovoltaic systems are generally expensive overall. Usually when they choose where it goes it's been because they did extensive research and simulations [pvsyst.com] to decide on which location to build it, which direction the panels will face, whether the climate conditions will cause problems, etc. If they chose to put it in one centralized location, it's because they did the fucking math and it will pay off.

Disclaimer: My cousin sells photovoltaic systems for a living, I've learned a lot from him while assisting.

$300,000,000 power plant.20,000 houses.=> $15,000 per house cost to provide power, up front.

So we're now looking at the power plant longevity to see if electric bills will be $1000 a year, or $3000 a year, to make up for the up-front investment. How long is the lifetime of a plant like this (ask your cousin!), I'm sure it's better than rooftop PVs (20-30 years).

Since the panels could be used as the roof itself, there wouldn't be any more leverage for storms to rip them off.

True, except Murphy's law dictates that a more expensive roof is more likely to be destroyed.

Another thing that came to mind, though: Having a big effing generator is all nice and well, but what do they do at night? Do they have a dam nearby they can use as a power reservoir?

Or during four days of cloud cover during a large hurricane for that matter. My guess is that they are tied into the FPL network and will be powered by one of the Nuclear generators around there. You can't really have an effective dam in Florida, it's too flat, water will just run around it.

I doubt you have to deal with hurricanes tearing roofs off of buildings in Switzerland, so it makes sense to spend the money on it. While a great idea in general, in FL it's essentially trying to save yourself from losing money shortly down the road.

I used to live near the Inglis Hydroelectric plant [inglishydropower.com]. The dam was built in 1909, but stopped generating power in 1965. I know there was talk through the 80's and maybe early 90's about restarting it, but it's output was insignificant compared to the nuclear and 4 coal plants of the Florida Power (Now Progress Energy) Crystal River site, just a few miles away. Bah, who needs clean renewable, when we have 4 coal burning plants and a nuclear reactor that's offline most of the time.:)

The link above indicates that they're trying to bring it back online as a 2 megawatt facility. In comparison, the nuclear plant a few miles away is a 914 megawatt facility. The 4 coal plants there generate 2313 megawatts. Then again, the Crystal River site is the 12th worst polluter in the US. Ahhh, gotta love clean burning coal. {cough}{cough}

People get bent out of shape about new power plants going in. But, they get even more bent out of shape if you try to put a hydroelectric plant in. Not only does it use the land the plant is on, but it also uses miles upstream that it has to back up for water pressure. There's no "natural" way to do it, you need the differential in water level to make it work. How do you say "We're going to flood this million acres, all of you need to move now. You'll be paid for your property. Have a nice day."

One side benefit from a roof covered in PV panels is having a 3 to 6 inch airgap between the roof and the PV panels. you lose a huge amount of solar heat gain with that airgap, you also increase the efficiency of the PV panels by giving them a place to dump excess heat into the air.

How would resetting them horizontally help in that case either? Seems to me that putting them on roofs spreads the chance of breakdown. Sure some roofs can be blown of, but not all of them. If that hurricane passes right over that solar power generator you risk losing all power at once.

How would putting them flat against the roof help when the entire roof gets blown off the house? This isn't unheard off...

How would tilting the panels to vertical (which, incidentally, implies the use of a tracker which isn't really necessary any more, which increases the cost and complexity of the system and makes it more fragile) help, either?

In actuality, the smartest thing to do would be to put the whole fucking thing somewhere else. If the ocean level rises even six feet (one of the more conservative estimates these days) Florida is well and rightly fucked.

Florida is a hurricane-prone area, and the houses aren't built to-code. Thus, every few years a hurricane comes along and blows roofs off, making more work (and more money) for the contractors. If the original builder's code violations aren't caught, it's a net-win for everyone except the homeowner and insurance company.

Florida offers a double-edged sword, as the code is poor to begin with, and is almost always not followed. Corrupt building inspectors allow this sort of crap to continue unabated. Just

How on earth did this fuckwitted driven get modded up? Your argument against this is that it takes up space that could be used for trees? Have you consider that so do the fucking houses, and that also the world needs less reliance on things that spew CO2 into the air more than it needs an acre of trees that stop sucking the stuff up once they grow to full height?

Well, they are installing rooftops with solar panels, too. From the CNet article [cnet.com] that the article linked to: "Along with solar panels on the roofs of buildings citywide, it will be a revolutionary leap forward in clean energy for an urban area."

Besides that fact, if you have a solar generator that supplies electricity to houses, you can then charge those houses for the supply of electricity. Having solar panels for each house effectively means no revenue stream.

Generator facility can store more power and they can charge you for said energy. Considering how much money they are spending on infrastructure this is not unreasonable. Generator at your house does not give that luxary - though they will probably build it so you can sell excess energy to the electric company.

A disadvantage of having solar panels at your house - if they break you are responsible for fixing them. At a generator site they are responsible.

>In that case, why build a massive solar generator instead of fitting the rooftops with solar panels from the start? It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city

I think a better question might be, "Why build a brand new city in a state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the US? Do they really need more empty houses?"

have you ever been to one of those cities? they don't use the golf carts to go play golf. they drive them up and down the roads. walgreens has tiny parking places for them. they all have tiny garages for them. http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/TRO1636.php [worldofstock.com]

It is warm here in Florida - and my family uses AC pretty much year round. The funny thing is that it isn't nearly as sunny as I thought it would be. We had many, many more days of sun per year when we were in Arizona. And there it got cool in the winter, though it was a bit hotter in the summer.So this does bring up some interesting issues. I can't imagine they could get by purely on solar alone unless they have some truly massive battery capacity that could allow them to run for days without g

I think the amount of sun you guys get in Ft. Meyers is mitigated by the incredible thunderstorms that roll from there down through Alligator Alley toward Ft. Lauderdale. My parents live full time in Naples, FL (about 20 minutes south of Ft. Meyers for those not familiar) and virtually every time we have visited it has been sunny and really hot in the morning, and then incredibly cloudy and eventually stormy in the afternoon. You can almost set your watch that there will be a storm sometime between 2 pm and

This isn't about a "high concept" purely solar community, this is about getting federal subsidies for using alternative energy. They're going to go for maximum ROI, try to get a systemwide (covering their coal, gas and nuclear facilities) tax break in exchange for building this "significant" alternative energy project, so of course it's going to be as minimal as possible to still get the maximal benefits... I don't think much battery capacity is on the plans here, they'll just use the grid.

Unfortunately the sunniest places are also some of the hottest, requiring quite a lot of power-hungry air conditioning.

Hopefully they'll take advantage of highly-efficient ground source heat pumps [wikipedia.org] since the water table is probably very high in the Ft. Meyers area.

There is groundwater in Ft. Myers, but it isn't as attractive for heat pumping as in other areas. Close to the coast, it's salt water intruded. Further inland, it periodically drops pretty far below ground due to aggressive pumping for irrigation (same source of the salt-water intrusion problem), and the final kicker is that groundwater temp is the annual average temp, which is only about 68 degrees, an o.k. heat sink, but not highly attractive the way ground-water cooling would be in, say, Minnesota.

The water table is within 10' (3 meters) of the surface throughout all of the Florida peninsula per a tour at hemmingway's house. It is for that reason that hemmingway's house was one of the FEW that has a basement.

Apparently, doing geo-thermal HAS a major issue there. The problem is that water is cooler underground which retards microbial growth. Add heat constantly, and all the fertilizers that Florida used on sugar, oranges, etc and you have a REAL issue with growth in your drinking water. As such, a n

That's a great point. It'd probably be a more efficient use of funds to implement a municipal-scale ground source heat pump distribution network.

Photoelectric takes a long time to pay for itself. GSHP are relatively cheap - the expensive part is the digging. Distribute that cost among the community and I'd be surprised if the bang per buck wasn't many times better than PE.

Unfortunately the sunniest places are also some of the hottest, requiring quite a lot of power-hungry air conditioning.

Modern folks think they are required to have air conditioning, sure. But I grew up in Jacksonville (Florida) in the 60's and 70's - and houses with air conditioning were the exception, not the norm. People got along just fine without it. We didn't have older folk or kids keeling over from the heat. Nobody panicked when it got over 75 F.

What changed in Florida was four things: 1) Cutting down all the shade trees when building new developments. 2) Building standard ranch tract houses rather than houses suited to the climate. 3) Massive waves of 'immigrants' and retirees from colder areas of the country who were unused to the heat. 4) Ongoing marketing by AC companies that AC was 'required' to be modern and up-to-date.

Yeah, I have to agree with this. I'm living in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan and it gets "Florida hot" and then some (I lived in Tallahassee for a year when I was a kid). In the school where I work we *do* have air conditioning. It's set at 28 degrees C. I don't have air conditioning in my house. I use a hand fan during the day and an electric fan at night. If it's really hot I wear a wet bandana on my head. You get used to the heat. Hell, it's barely even warm here compared to places like India.

Tallahassee resident and former South Florida resident here. Sure, A/C isn't required. Neither is an internet connection. Neither is electricity, if you want to debate the meaning of "required". But all of those are necessary for modern life. Summers in Florida without A/C consist primarily of sitting on a porch, fanning yourself and drinking iced tea. It makes for a nice "Andy Griffith" tableau, but for those of us not benefiting from coastal breezes (like Jacksonville), we'd rather get some work don

Tallahassee resident and former South Florida resident here. Sure, A/C isn't required. Neither is an internet connection. Neither is electricity, if you want to debate the meaning of "required". But all of those are necessary for modern life.

In other words, you want to handwave the definition of 'required' until you can force AC into it. (Or less politely, bullshit.)

$300 million divided by say 20,000 residents is $15K/resident. Add in the cost of money and amortization and you're talking at least $2,200 a year.

Plus they need to build a regular power station to handle 100% of the load for when it gets cloudy and rainy, which in Florida is a non-negligible part of the time. Plus the power lines to bring in all that power to the city. No, you can't assume the rest of their system has that much extra capacity in lines or generators.

You seem to have forgotten that this is a -new- city, not an old one being revamped. This simply means that each house is an additional $15k (average) to buy. It's not like there are current residents being taxed $15k just to continue living there.

The fact that it's expensive is an attraction for the people in this community, not a negative.

BTW, if you'd read the article, you wouldn't have had to guess at the number of residents... You'd know it to be 19,500.

Actually it isn't $2,200 a year, it is under $1140 a year at 6.5% interest for 30 years (the usual home loan term). You must also consider that Florida has some very favorable rebates for Solar and there are some Federal tax credits too. In summer my electric bill is more than $100, so paying $95 for solar before rebates and tax credits will be almost the same amount as coal. Personally I would rather get my energy from solar. If it lasts more than 30 years it is free, if it doesn't then oh well, same price as coal. Sure, there are some other alternate energy sources, but I commend the experiment.

Well, since the fee is per resident, an average household will be paying something like 2.3 times that value, or north of $2500/yr. Also, the cost to generate and distribute electricity is only about 25%-30% fuel costs, the rest is maintenance and transmission. One would hope the maintenance would be less than a traditional plant, but (no I didn't RTFA) if there is a steam cycle involved it may not vary much from fossil fuel. If you bank on transmission and administration being set at 50% of the cost, and

You're fudging the numbers. You have to borrow TODAY, and the loan can't go out for 30 years as the panels are unlikely to last that long. I assumed they'd last 20 years, so you're perpetually paying $2,200 a year at least. And you can't count subsidies or rebates or tax credits as that's just robbing everyone else to subsidize you, or if every place had these panels you'd just be robbing yourself. And Florida doesn't use coal very much, mostly very expensive natural gas to run the generators. And yes

They don't need to build a regular power station. They can just tap into the grid like everyone else.

Also, while your amortization is a bit high, you have to realize that $2200/year is not such a huge amount of money for Florida, under last year's energy prices. As a New Englander, I only turn on the air conditioning in one or two rooms part time for maybe six weeks out of the year, but Floridians don't have that option. For them air conditioning is like heating is for us. I'll bet a lot of folks in Mia

You're fudging. You can't just tap into the grid, most places have negative extra capacity. Even if you did there's a cost involved.And having to run AC a lot is not a plus for your side, it just jacks up the amount of solar panels needed. It's basically insane to collect electricity at 15% efficiency to run individual AC units when a solar boiler could collect 100% to make chilled water at more than triple the efficiency. Madness.

And playing the futures market does not make a watt-hour of renewable en

For me living and paying taxes in Florida ($1700 property taxes,) the most unattractive part is building a brand new city instead of retrofitting an existing one. I would like to see the tax money used on this project benefit existing residents who have paid into the system, not new residents moving into brand new homes.

Here's a thought: Maybe they actually did the math. Maybe they did the math in a much more indepth analysis than you did. But then again - this is Slashdot. Everyone here is a genious who knows much better after 30 seconds than the people who've worked on the projects for months and years.

Ah, no. This is the same company that did the math for putting up wind turbines at their nuclear plant, saw the dismal numbers, and went ahead and BUILT THEM ANYWAY. Even though there is not a single spot in Florida that's consistently windy enough to even approach break-even.

Photovoltaics will be cost-effective as soon as you see non-govt, non-utility folks putting their money into them with no muni bonds, legislative mandates or tax incentives. Not any decade anytime soon.

Most of the Babcock Ranch is swamp land, nature preserve (They do tours there, alligators, FL. panthers, etc..). I am guessing that is why the requirement for Solar power there, as there was a lot of stink locally when it was sold about what they would actually be allowed to do with the land. I look forward to moving there (if I can afford it!)

Great - so Southern FL loses more of it's already alarmingly shrunken natural habitat, places more strain on it's limited water supplies, some developer pockets big bucks in subsidies from the the taxpayers, and we get what...? Yet another development that's planned and promised to be great and wonderful and new, and ends up being just more crowding and cookie cutter ticky tacky - but with solar panels.

But the beez fly around crazy when you light them and don't last very long at all. Perhaps it would be smarter to use the wax, that burns. If you put some kind of wick in it you could have a very controable burn. Might patent it!

Just around the corner from Babcock is Lehigh Acres, you can pick up houses there for $30K now, one of the most under-occupied cities in the SouthEast. The whole inland area there is in a serious housing over-supply.

According to this: http://www.babcockranchflorida.com/innovationvideo.asp [babcockranchflorida.com] By consuming less KW hours than the solar facilities located on the property will produce, Babcock Ranch will become the first city in the world powered by clean, renewable solar energy.

I interpret this to mean: while on average they produce more than they need - they trade their surplus when they have excess production for energy from the grid when they don't have enough. So they'll have a normal grid connection for the trading.

It's about time, that a city comes into its own and has a power grid which is self sustaining, even though it is still plugged into the regular power grid we know and loathe.If anything happens locally, the main power grid kicks in, if the main power grid has problems, it does not wipe out a whole city's power!

This is a win win situation for all parties involved and will also help create more jobs...a local city power plant instead of the federal/privatized power plant.

It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out. While I hope it will be successful I suspect it will produce mixed results. The amount of power they are generating sounds fairly low for the size of the city (unless the population density is very low) and I'm guessing that the cars and most of the space heating won't be electric (but the cooling probably will be).

Solar power is great but it's probably not going to be how we generate most of our power in the next 100 years. We really need to star

They might as well buy out and raze some existing city and build it on the oceanfront--because if they charge property taxes that actually cover the construction costs, only multi-millionaires will be able to afford to live there anyway.

...
"Modern living with clean efficient power! Act now, for a limited time, get a free Tesla roadster with purchase of any home..."
~

Playing with numbers for a second... assuming there are 2.5 people living in each home and the community is equally spread across all age groups with an average life expectancy of 75 years then the school systems will have 650 kids in every grade level and they'll need to have enough space for 8,500 k-12 students. At a seemingly reasonable ratio 12 students per teacher, this is ~700 teachers who (if paid $35k/yr) will draw $25M in salaries, which wi

Why build a new city in Florida when all the ones they already have are chock full of empty, foreclosed houses? Its a lot more green to live in the places you've already built than it is to build new places. Putting solar panels on your new city doesn't change that equation.

As someone who grew up in Florida, I wonder did these guys forget something? How do you hurricane proof solar panels??? You can't exactly put steel reinforced concrete in front of them to block incoming projectiles that fly around during a hurricane. Solar panels might make sense in the Mojave desert but not so sure about Florida where the entire state is at risk of being hit by a hurricane every year. I guess they can swap the panels out for wind generators during a hurricane. Maybe a tidal generator

Nothing about the whole project sounds sustainable to me. When I think of sustainable I think of a system that will keep working even if Peak Oil occurs. This development would have to turn off the power every time it is cloudy. The very first serious storm could destroy the panels and then they are all done. So this means that it is only sustainable in the context of an ongoing supply of cheap energy via oil.

I HAVE heard ideas that sound like they could last a very long time. Building solar collect

Isn't thermal storage one of the options? One that actually makes sense in case of a solar power plant? (With the obvious requirement of ditching photovoltaics for solar thermal power generator, of course.)

You would indeed have to generate thermal solar power, store it and convert it into electricity later on. The main drawback with using molten salt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage#Molten_salt_technology), which is one of the few viable options for electricity generation, is its high maintenance (as it's rather corrosive), and if it solidifies you're fucked as it takes a long time to liquify the entire circulation.Another option is vanadium redox-flow batteries, (http://www.vrbpower.com/d

is that it would be cheaper to that place to run a solar THERMAL generator. It would allow easy storage of heat (they use OIL for transfer medium; relatively trivial to store). But instead, they are taking the most expensive form of electricity there is; Solar PV.

I would love to know why dems are pushing wind and solar PV, when Solar PV is the most expensive option and wind can not be used as base power except with EXPENSIVE storage. Geo-thermal can serve as base power and solar thermal allows relatively c

Key phrase there, "In the long run". Yes, in the long run. As in, in another 10-20 years. BUT at this time, we MUST cut emissions as well as lower costs. PV does not cut it. TOOOOOO expensive. Right now, Solar Thermal is much cheaper.